I converted most of my bulbs in my house to Philips LED lamps from Home Depot. I had a few teething problems, with some of the bulbs initially. Some of their earlier floodlights were around a single bright LED, and it was annoying to have in an angled fixture. I took it back to the store, and found newer ones that were built around a multiple LEDs and had a diffuser.
Some bulbs are still incandescents, mostly because I haven't been able to find a satisfactory replacement. These are small chandelier lights (that would need at least 40 watt equivalent output) and the three-way bulbs on the night stand (Cree just released them). Products are available, but both require shipping from the States. I'll wait a little longer before making the complete switch.

As rooftop solar gets cheaper every year, electricity won't be the biggest environmental impact of lighting.

I already have a number of friends who's rooftop solar panels generate more electricity than they use. Once people reach that point, the biggest impact to the environment will be manufacturing --- either with poisons like mercury in CFL bulbs or with dirty semiconductor fabs and lead on circuit boards for LEDs.

I agree about the mercury in CFLs but how do you think most solar cells are made?... They are made using "dirty semiconductor fabs." So what would you rather make with the dirty semiconductor fab, a little square mm LEDs or square meters of solar cells? Also, no one uses lead anymore.

As rooftop solar gets cheaper every year, electricity won't be the biggest environmental impact of lighting.

I already have a number of friends who's rooftop solar panels generate more electricity than they use. Once people reach that point, the biggest impact to the environment will be manufacturing --- either with poisons like mercury in CFL bulbs or with dirty semiconductor fabs and lead on circuit boards for LEDs.

Don't forget that the solar panels only over-produce for the household at times when they *don't need lights*. This impacts your environmental summarization because in order to shift that electricity from solar hours (when the sun is up) to non-solar hours (when the sun is down and you need more indoor lighting) you need to use additional expensive (economic and environmental) techniques like battery storage or borrowing electricity from a nearby coal fired plant.

While that is technically true, the time where solar cells produce power is the time where the general power consumption is largest: During working hours. Thus, solar power reduces the peak power output needed by power plants. As power plants based on coal, nuclear and oil must support the peak need at all times, usage of solar power to lower the peak output needed means that power plants can reduce their power production, reducing their need for fuel as well as their environmental impact. (As power plant must produce enough power to support peak power needs, much of the power production during the night is simply wasted. This is why some are pushing for battery powered cars as these would be able to put the wasted capacity to use, even store it for use during day hours.)

You have limited understanding of how electricity is generated (it's OK, so do I). Most of the first half of your post is correct. (It's the parenthesized part where you go off the rails.)

Not all power plants are base load (the ones you describe), the daily variation is taken up by 'dispatchable power'; plants with throttles. Those vary from hydro to combustion turbines (jet engines hooked to generators). Load following can't really be seen in hourly load graphs. It's all about instantaneous control and is a king kameahmeaha bitch. That's where you see the gigawatt resistors (at the end of transmission lines, to dump the reflection when it trips).

If base load is dumping power, a neighboring area almost always buys it. It happens very rarely, usually associated with very bad weather forecasting. Spinning reserve violations (not having enough extra power to cover any one plant falling down) are much, much more common then dump power. Solar helps with spinning reserve anywhere it makes sense (if you are winter/night peaking solar almost certainly makes no sense). If solar becomes truly economic it will change the peak for areas. Which will change power pricing. Lock your surplus power buyer into a rate if you can.

LED bulbs sold in the EU must be lead free. The shops have to accept the dead ones back for recycling. The fact that they last a lot longer limits the environmental impact. The energy saved vs. incandescent can be used for other things that would produce a lot more pollution. The mistake of looking at technologies in isolation is a pretty common one when evaluating environmental impact.

The existing energy grid is already excellent for energy storage and arbitrage. Energy companies even do stuff like pump water up hydroelectric dams at night when they have a surplus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org] ) - so it's win-win for everyone if you give them your solar energy during the day, and take their surplus ( from hydro, nuke, wind, etc) at night.

I'm interested in solar power as a means to offset the cooling costs during 95+ degree F days with 80+% humidity. That is the bulk of my energy usage. Solar seems like a natural fit since my power usage is much lower on rainy days and night time.

I'm interested in solar power as a means to offset the cooling costs during 95+ degree F days with 80+% humidity. That is the bulk of my energy usage. Solar seems like a natural fit since my power usage is much lower on rainy days and night time.

You would probably get a better bang for the buck with a ground source heat pump.It's alot more efficient to pump in the cool air already underground to cool your home than it is to do the multipleenergy conversions from solar->electricity->compressor.

Both times I lived in areas with high temps and humidities, no one even had a basement. When you're near the coast, and near sea level (typical of high humidity areas), underground anything is right out.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I already have a high efficiency heat pump and according to the Geothermal Savings Calculator [climatemaster.com] my annual cooling savings is only $471/yr (heating is only $255/yr).

At least by supplementing my electrical source with solar energy, I can use any possible excess on lighting or appliances.

I started converting my bulbs to LEDs back in 2008, so my oldest bulbs are six years old, and still running.However, the question was about my most RECENT bulbs. I got two last month. Neither one has failed in the three weeks I've had them, so I have to vote "Never had one fail."

Duh, that should be obvious. The only reason they would have failed is if they were DOA or smoked when I plugged them in or something else was defective or the lamp fell over; bulbs that are supposed to last tens or hundreds of thousands of hours that I put in this year haven't had time to fail.

CFLs are different - they've been out a few years now, and I've had plenty of them fail, and worried about whether dead ones break before I get them out of the house and over to the recyclers.

My most recent not-really-energy-saving bulbs failed in 2-3 months. They were little red night-light bulbs from the dollar store post-Christmas discount, and one can argue that they're "energy-saving" because they're only a few watts (3 or 10 or something), but they were incandescents, not LEDs, so they're really not. I've replaced a couple of them with LEDs that haven't failed yet.

I picked up some 3-packs of 40 watt equivalent chandelier bulbs at Costco that work quite well. They seem brighter than the original incandescents though I did have one fail within a day which Costco let me exchange without question. They also dim just like the bulbs they replaced. They're only 4.8 watts instead of 40 watts. I put in 2 months or less even though other than the single failure I have not had any other LED bulb fail on me and I'm up to around 20 bulbs so far. I don't think I'll buy another incandescent or CFL ever again. I still have a lot of CFLs to use up though.

I have a few dimmable Cree bulbs and they flicker. Not impressed. Supposedly Phillips make better dimmable bulbs.

I just tested the two and had the exact opposite experience (with a pretty nice leviton digital dimmer, too). The 9.5w/60w equiv Cree bulbs worked fantastic, no flicker at any light level. The Philips bulbs (10.5w/60w equiv dimmable, according to the package) flickered like crazy and wouldnt even turn off all the way, they just slowed to a 1Hz flicker.

Interesting data point.Only one of my fixtures has a dimmer, the light over the dining room table. For reference, the fixture has five Philips bulbs in it, and they dim fine, no noticible flicker.Obviously, results vary.

I tried out a Cree flood in a light I have on a dimmer. The bulb mostly works, but it has somewhat odd behavior on low brightness levels where it will cut out after a few minutes. This only happens when the dimmer is near the bottom (but not totally off). Our workaround is to not use the lowest dimmer setting on that circuit, but it was unfortunate. I considered returning the bulb as defective, but that's effort and I only give a replacement bulb a 50/50 shot at fixing the problem.

Dimmable LED bulbs used to be more expensive. These days pretty much all the LED bulbs you see around are dimmable, even the low cost ones.

You often have to have to get newer dimmers for LEDs. Reading the fine print you find that comes with most bulbs.Here is what Cree says (pdf). [cree.com]:'Cree® LED bulbs are designed to be dimmed with standard incandescent type dimmers. They are also compatible with most Magnetic Low Voltage (MLV) and Electronic Low Voltage (ELV) dimmers. This list was generated from lab testing of samples and your results could vary."

The kicker is that "Standard" has a lot of different meanings, and many of the older dimmers re load dependent, and the LEDs draw so little power that older dimmers don't make much of a difference. My luck with dimming LEDs with old dimmer technology has not been good. Even new lamps, with supposedly modern dimmer tech seems to make little difference.

The most recently replaced ones are the ones that the kids can reach and like to turn off and on a bunch (kitchen, dining room, and bathroom) so they only last a little more than 2 years but others in the house are getting close to 7 years old.

I put an LED lamp in my drop light. Been under cars, in the crawlspace, knocked around pretty good. The "bulb" has taken much more abuse than any incandescent lamp ever could, and is going strong. The light pattern is not as good as an incandescent or fluorescent since there is a spot effect off the top of the bulb.

I agree, no CFL's in drop lights or other rugged duty applications. They contain mercury like any other fluorescent light. WHEN they break I don't need that particular cleanup headache.

I was an early adopter of CFL lights, and installed a set in the kitchen of an apartment I lived in. 3 years later when moving out my wife and I debated taking them (this was over 12 years ago). We left them primarily due to the slow start. Instant start CFL lamps have been hit and miss, with life spans in _days_ (usually with epic failure involving excess heat and sometimes fire!) and some that are nearly 10 years old in a couple floor lamps.

I installed a pair of LED spots in the canister lamps of my great room, I got tired of dragging a ladder in to change bulbs, especially since the chicken stick was too short, and a 6 ft step ladder was still needed. I used the extension ladder to install some "dimable" LED spots. NOT dimable, but at least reliable. After 5 years they are just as quirky as day 1, and I have not needed a ladder in my great room since! The biggest quirk is 1 lamp lights, then about 5 minutes later the other lamp lights. It is somewhat random which lamp will light first.

I also went to CFLs because of the energy savings. However, I'd get a few years life out of them.

However, I switched to LED bulbs virtually everywhere. Their energy savings is not that much better than CFLs... but there is far less of a mess when a LED bulb hits the floor than an unprotected CFL. So far, I've not had any of my LED bulbs burn out, even with daily use, some on dimmer switches.

I know there is a cost premium, but between the longer life (barring an overvoltage, which will fry LEDs quickly) and the fact that physical damage won't result in a mini Superfund site, they seem to be worth the cost.

My plan is to switch out my CFLs for LEDs when the CFLs burn out, but thus far none of them have. I did the bulk of the CFL replacements back in 2004 and they just don't want to quit. The only LED light I've been able to install is to replace an incandescent flood on a circuit controlled by a dimmer switch.

The only upright lamps we have are either in the master bedroom or are behind other furniture so they can't be tipped over. Kids do seem to like the strobe effect of flicking a light on and off as quickly as they can though. Then add in the arguments they get in over who gets to turn on the light and the back and forth of them turning it on and off while arguing over who gets to turn the light on and it is a wonder that those CFLs make it 2 years. I gather that LED bulbs do much better with this duty cycle so once the existing bulbs fail they will be replaced with those.

The choice I made at the time was between startup behaviour and colour temperature. They
either come on immediately but have a blue cast, or take a minute to warm up but have a warmer
colour. I have the former in my kitchen, the latter in my living room and bedroom.

LEDs are interesting but their "white" is such a weird colour I'll pass on them for now.

Make sure you're not confusing the "white" you see with, for example, LED flashlights, with the "white" that you would get if you bought good LED lightbulbs. The Philips ones are especially good, in my experience. You can get them in usually at least 3 different colors; warm white, cool white, and daylight. Warm white, usually around 2700K-3300K color temperature, is what most people have in their homes; it's the same as tungsten, and is considered "relaxing". Cool white is more bluish; something like 5000K. It is more often used in offices, because studies show that people are more productive with cooler-colored lighting (perhaps because it's closer to the color of noontime sun than tungsten, which is more like sunrise or sunset). It's also used in kitchens and bathrooms, because it's a fairly neutral color. Finally, daylight is the bluest color, at 6500K; it's also used in work areas or factories and places like that.

Sometimes, the cheapest and most efficient LED bulbs are in the blue end of the spectrum, especially when the color temperature doesn't matter too much - like a flashlight. So cheap lights will have a poor blue color to them. But good quality lights can give you any color you want - so you can pick which color looks best to you. I'd recommend seeing if there is a home improvement or other store in your area that sells light bulbs and has a display so you can compare a variety of lamps when turned on.

In the end, LEDs basically have it all; instant-on like tungsten, longer lifespan and lower energy usage than CFL, and available in any color you like. Not all of them support dimming, and not all dimmers support LEDs, so that's something to be aware of, if you have any dimmer circuits. I replaced nearly all of my bulbs with LEDs (and one of my four dimmers), and you'd never know the difference. My power bill sure does, though...

So far none of the Energy Efficient ones have failed. I have a mixture of incandescent and CFLs and am just starting to replace with LEDs for some places in the house.

Kitchen - LED spots in the ceiling. Master Bedroom sconces most recently and ceiling fixtures.Rooms - CFL for floor lamps that stay on for hours.Garage, bathroom, outside lights - Incandescent for places that are turned on and off due to quick visits.

Any place where lights are just turned on and off briefly get incandescent bulbs. At least for now. I'll likely replace with LED as I run out. Any place where the lights stay on for a while, like the living room or bedroom got the CFLs. I've been replacing the incandescent bulbs in the small fixtures with brighter LEDs so I can see, like in the MBR. Because the sconces are flush against the wall, there's a limit on how many watts you can put in the fixture. Some warning labels say this is due to the heat put off by the larger watt bulbs. So replacing with cooler and brighter LED bulbs let me brighten a room without the possibility of scorching the wall.

My parents bought some of the very first CFL lamps, and they are still being used every day. So, it truely is possible to produce lamps with an incredible life-time, but I guess it is not a very good business model. Beter make lamps that break down, so people have to buy new ones every so many years.

I have a mix of CFL, halogen, and old-fashioned filament bulbs. The halogen is the shortest-lived, by far. The CFL has been doing fine for years. Interestingly, the filaments bulbs, by and large, are also doing fine after many years. The average age is well over 3 years (the longest interval in the poll) even for bulbs that get used every day.

My most recent ones are the CFLs currently illuminating our apartment. They were all purchased in October, so. . . 9 months and counting... Shall I get back to you in the coming days, weeks, months, or years, when one (or all) finally do fail?
Of course, when that does happen, I'll have already bought replacements, so my most recent energy bulbs will have lasted about a day at that point.

I started with CFLs at least 15 years ago, possibly longer. I didn't mind the energy savings. What I did object to was my incandescents, which had made an annoying habit of going "pop!" and leaving me in the dark.

The old CFLs took a few seconds to start up, which baffled some of my friends. The modern CFLs are generally instant-on, although they'll get a bit brighter as they warm up.

I hardly ever lose a bulb any more. One of them failed last year, which was memorable, because it just doesn't happen. I had an equally old replacement for it, probably about 10 years old. Sometimes I knock a lamp down, which has doubtless killed more of them than just their age.

Every time I move, I just swap the landlord's cruddy incandescents for my CFLs. They've lasted me forever. I've only had to get new ones when the lamp had this ridiculous little Christmas-tree sockets.

I've had a few of my older CFLs fail though but generally only after quite a few years. Duty cycle makes a huge difference. I just replaced two incandescent bulbs that were supplied by our builder almost twenty years ago. We just don't use those particular lights very often. I only wish I'd bought more cheap, incandescent bulbs before they were outlawed since they are fine for lights that are rarely used.

The last energy-saving light bulb that I've bought turned 1 year on July 1. It's a Philips 1055 lumens/13 watt LED that's roughly equivalent to a 75 watt incandescent. I had prevously been using a 800 lumens/15 watt CFL, but I thought it was too dim, and swapped it to our hallway. We have had mixed experiences with CFLs in our house. We found that in our dining room they would only last a few months, I think that they didn't like being turned on and off all the time and they were right in front of a hot fireplace. I would keep the CFL in my bedroom going all the time at night until I went to bed, negating some of the potential energy savings. Used this way, I seemed to get at least 2 years out of them, but they would get quite dim for a few months before they would fail. I have deliberately been switching off my LED light bulb whenever I go out of my bedroom, so far it's still going strong. I paid 24 NZ$ for it and I calculate that at roughly 6 hours a day of usage at NZ $0.24 per kW/hr I have more than recovered the initial purchase price in power savings, if it were to fail tomorrow I would be happy to get another just like it.

Honestly, I've only ever had one and that was a freebie. That was 5 years ago and it works. I haven't bought any up until now simply because I already had a stack of the old fashioned filament bulbs to use up first and even then, they've been lasting 2-3 years before popping. At current usage rates, I won't have to buy any household bulbs for another decade or so, assuming there is no disaster that destroys the bulbs.

The dynamic range for the options in the poll could be better. A high-quality CFL can keep trucking for 20 years, with LEDs probably clocking in even longer lifespans. Actually every proper CFL should be able to reach that 3 years.

I have 4 Ikea CFL's from 2006 still going strong (out of a 6 pack, the other two went outside on the front and back door and died a horrible immediate death in a motion light). I also have a LED bulb from 2010 in constant use working well. I have a handful more sitting in a package that I can't use because the ceiling fan is on a dimmer. I don't know if I'll ever get to them.

I bought two cases of LEDs for $2.99 each at Costco (one 60W equiv, one 75W) . Yep, $2.99. I replaced every bulb, inside and outside my house and it's really nice. The color is the same all over the house, and knowing I won't have to change one till I'm well past 60 is VERY Cool.

My most recent have been the new low-cost LEDs. I only bought my first batch about six months ago. I have been replacing CFLs as they fail, so only have four LED bulbs in service at the moment - ranging from about a week to 6 months in service.

The oldest in-service has been on continuously for the full 6 months. (It's the "basement night-light" on a ceiling mount that doesn't have an off switch. It's a 6-watt LED / "40 Watt equivalent".)

My earliest batches of compact fluorescent bulbs were terrible. The newer (2005+) batches are just starting to fail.

Same here. I bought my first LED bulb at Costco a few weeks ago, because it was only $3, and after my experiences with CFLs, I'd like to be able to switch to LEDs after trying it out for a little while.

I think the breakeven point is better for LEDs than CFLs (cost of bulbs over time vs. energy savings), since CFLs seem to not last very long and LEDs keep getting cheaper. I want them to get a LITTLE bit cheaper still, before I start investing in large numbers of them, though.

I also write the dates on mine because I have also noticed that they don't last nearly as long and I also haven't seen any noticeable reduction in my energy costs. In fact, my energy costs are about triple what they were before CFLs came out.

The regulatory agencies prevent the per kwh prices from going up, but the billing fees, line item fees, paper statement fees, non-paper statement fees and whatnot are able to be adjusted at a whim. Also, the local electric utility is only regulated on their delivery charge. They are allowed to pass the cost of fuel directly to the consumer. The cost of the fuel is passed on at cost to the consumer, so there is no profit. But they don't need to make a profit, since they buy their fuel from their parent company, which is a fuel company and not a utility, so their prices are not regulated.

Yep, I've yet to have one last a year. I've gone through 20 or so in the last 3 years. It doesn't seem to matter whether I buy the cheap ones or the most expensive. Within a month or two they go yellowish, then quit soon after. I've also had 3 explode, throwing glass shards all over the room. That isn't much fun. Oh, I guess there IS one that has lasted. That one never gets turned off, and while it's very yellow, it's still working. Maybe running them 24/7 is the answer, but then there isn't as much power savings. Looked at LEDs in the store, but none of them has light that's even close to satisfactory. The choice seems to be blue or yellow, and I hate both.

I've got four in a ceiling fixture that were there when I bought the place 4 years ago. They take time to "warm up", but never flicker or buzz, that I can tell. They took the same amount of time back then as they do now, so my guess is that they were just early-ish models that were designed to look like incadescents. I've got two in nightstand lamps, which get power-cycled perhaps a half-dozen times a day, and have been going for 3-4 years so far. I've got a couple more in standing lamps that I don't remember when I installed, and one being used as a porch light that's just been there about 8 months.

I've had fairly good experiences with CFL bulbs, it's interesting to see how many people have had much more negative ones. I guess I've been lucky.

Our house was built in 1995, and we lost exactly one recessed incandescent flood out of 24 in 18 years. In the last 18 months we've lost 5 of 20 CFLs. Four are still incandescent because those areas actually needed light, and, e.g., "equivalent to 100W" really means "almost equivalent to 50W" thanks to the usual practice of industry-written standards and regulations.

It's not costing us much directly because the bulbs are almost free after local electric company rebates at Costco (and those 0 lumen bulbs don't draw much wattage) but the $250 electric bill doesn't pay itself (nor does it ever seem to pay for added capacity). Thus, as invariably happens in the USA, mock-capitalists have purchased the rights to game the system and get rich off of what started out as a noble (or at least equitable) idea.

I built out the basement with real fluorescents (some commercial, some European (i.e., non-compact residential types)), and, despite being much older technology, their average life has been much better - far exceeding the advertised 20,000 hours for always-on fixtures, and at least equaling it for those turned on/off several times a day (roughly relative to the quality of the ballast).

Pointless anecdote: A frostless incandescent bulb in almost daily use near the basement coal chute in the house my father was born in outlived his 75 years by at least 5 on each end, and was still working when the house was sold.

It's strange. Of the many CFLs I've installed, I've only had three failures. Two of which were early Walmart bulbs that were shit. The other was one of the bulbs I settled on for everything else, it got a smoky smell and discolored the plastic near one end of the tube: clearly some magic blue smoke escaped. Other than that, I've had 10 years of reliable service from a couple dozen bulbs. A few of the oldest ones (4 bulbs) have a "warm up" time where they are noticeably dim when you turn them on at first, but all of the other bulbs come on at or near their full brightness.

I do have underground power though, I wonder if comes out cleaner thanks to that?

regarding the "equivalent to 100W" practice; what I find most annoying is when I buy one where "equivalent to 100W" really IS equivalent to 100W. for example, I bought a 20W fluorescent bulb for my hallway and now, every time I turn it on, I can see my x-ray skeleton being burned into the wall next to me.

It sounds a lot like the power quality in your house is extremely bad. Have you had other devices fail prematurely?

Well, if bad power is an ongoing problem, then obviously it would be extremely irresponsible of the bulb makers to make them so dependent on clean power and it would be irresponsible of the government to outlaw bulbs that are more tolerant of lower quality power.

The government didn't outlaw them based on their tolerance to power, they outlawed lower effieciency bulbs. Governing is often dealing with conflicting interests. LIfe is complicated. Stop pretending it isn't.

Also, LED bulbs are more tolerant. Use those if you have a terrible power supply.

Where do you draw the line? Some level of badness has to be classified as a fault, some limit on what bulbs must be capable of surviving must be set for the standards. You can't expect stuff to be indestructible (except Model M keyboards, obviously).

Where do you draw the line? Some level of badness has to be classified as a fault, some limit on what bulbs must be capable of surviving must be set for the standards. You can't expect stuff to be indestructible (except Model M keyboards, obviously).

I don't want them to be indestructible, but since they cost 10 times as much, it is reasonable to expect that they will last longer, not less long, and that they will be more resilient, not less resilient, and they will produce more light, not less light.

No. It's *YOUR* CFLs that are complete junk. I bought a bunch (Philips Marathon, 900 lumen, 15 Watt) about five or six years ago and have yet to have one fail. I don't have any of that "build up to full brightness" nonsense I've seen in other bulbs. It's full brightness right away.

So, given the experience that I and a significant number of CFL purchasers have had, is it any wonder that we scratch our heads at your bad luck and wonder about your power quality.

It is irrational to think that a light bulb should be so horribly unreliable

Agreed.

I started buying CFLs 12 years ago. I have had four fail in that time, out of 40, spread over two different physical houses. 90% lasting over a decade? I'll take those numbers over replacing every single one every 3-6 months!

That said... "It is irrational to think that a light bulb should be so horribly unreliable" that they last two months when everyone else has them lasting for several years. Someone in this discussion has stated an irrational conclusion. Me, I still have 36 out of 40 CFLs working more than a decade later, so I don't think I have the logic problem...

BTW, all those "sensitive" electronics you describe? Each and every one of them have beefy power supplies designed to deal with brief poor power conditions, whether they simply turn off or buffer a few seconds of suitable power to make it through momentary rough patches. A 3-for-$10 CFL has no giant filter caps hidden in some nearby pocket universe to help it magically weather a brownout that would cook all those devices you describe if they didn't possess exactly such safeguards.

Well maybe your richy rich multi millionaire bulbs last a long ass time, but the normal $2-5 per bulbs are garbage. I have to replace at least one every 6 months out of aprox 15 bulbs installed in my apt. My anecdote cancels out your anecdote!!! so there

I know many people as well who have the same problems. My building manager for instance who manages a 200 suite property. The building engineers at work who swap them out all the time. The balast generally goes and then the bulb is toast. Sometimes they go grey first in the tube, but most are heavily yellowed from heat damage. I like the energy savings, and lower heat, but old ass bulbs are far more reliable.

Great, you list the types of places they almost always have bad power.Unless you 200 suite apartment has a high quality power system., you neighbors blender use could impact you power quality.

I pay less the 5 dollar for all my CFLs, and 5.26 for dim-able Phillips 60 watt bulb. I bought it last weekend.I bought it to replace a CFL in my sons room that had been there for 4 years, and it's on for over 10 hours a day.

Well maybe your richy rich multi millionaire bulbs last a long ass time

Ever heard of "moving"? I don't own two houses, I've lived two different places in the past decade.

but the normal $2-5 per bulbs are garbage. I have to replace at least one every 6 months out of aprox 15 bulbs installed in my apt.
[...]I like the energy savings, and lower heat, but old ass bulbs are far more reliable.

FIrst, I buy the Home Depot discount bulk packs, in the 4 bulbs for $10 range. So yeah, comparing apples to apples here

Second, you have to replace ONE out of fifteen, every six months? Do you remember having incandescents at all? You have to replace all of them every six months (except maybe that one lonely attic light that you only use a total of 10 hours of per year), and the highest use ones, you could expect to replace every 2-3 months. People actually used to keep a six-pack of replacement bulbs around to deal with one or three dying at the worst possible time. Today? do people actually keep spare CFLs around? I don't, seems like a waste of space for how often I need one.

We apparently don't define "reliable" the same way.

The balast generally goes and then the bulb is toast. Sometimes they go grey first in the tube, but most are heavily yellowed from heat damage.

Ballasts go because of poor quality power, nothing more and nothing less (or putting a non-dimmable one on a dimmer circuit - same thing, just self-inflicted poor power quality). As for heat damage, Yes Virginia, some fixtures designed for burn-to-the-touch incandescents don't make suitable fixtures for CFLs. Specifically, if it has a heat shield on the base and a completely enclosing shade, yeah, you'll cook your CFLs nicely.

No, just trying to make sense of your experneice versus our experience. I replaced all of the incadecents with the cheapest CFL's back in 2006. All still work. Just moved and did the same. None have ever gone out on me, in this country. When I was living in a third world country, yeah, the power sucked and it blew cfls all the time.

Its a reasonable inference, rather than blaming a vast conspiritoral scam.

It's not irrational to suspect power. BTW: many thing will work fine with dirty power, so keep that in mind.

"When the power is good enough for more than a dozen computers, two laptops, a 60" TV, a LCD projector, an oscope, about $20k worth of stereo equipment, nearly $10k worth of HAM radio equipment, and tons of other electronic equipment, then it must be power that is the problem. If there was a problem, something else would have quit."You are either a liar or the most ignorant ham operator I have every met when it come to electricity.

"When the power is good enough for more than a dozen computers,"with a power supply that helps clean the power during conversion from AC to DC.

" an oscope"really, you have an Oscope, but don't understand how the power coming into it works?

I was going to take the rest part, but instead I'm just going to say, Lights are plug into the AC. There is no converter or batter. Incandescent bulbs can take freq drift, center line drift, bot reduction, and numerous other problems from bad wiring. In fact of you don't have any filters between those device and the wall, THEY could be the cause of dirty power.

FUCK! I jst saw you are AC. I"m not going to cancel because someone might actual need to know this and I've written it already.

Depends where you are, but I got my LEDs for $10, and they use 6W. CFLs are $1.35 for a 13W ot the same brightness. Power for me is $0.25/kWh, the LED pays for itself after about 5,000 hours over the CFLs, and the LED is rated for 50,000 hours (no idea how accurate that is, but they should last longer than the CFL) and the CFL is 8,000 hours, it's worth it right now, by a lot.

However I got to say, I actually bought the LEDs because CFLs were a non-option for me, I was living with someone sensitive to UV, and they couldn't be around CFLs.

Generally speaking, anything with lots of parts has more points of failures. Since CFLs all have ballasts, my experience has been that spikes does take a toll, by virtue of them dying after the storm.an incandescent is just a big resister. Yes, it can break but it is fairly tolerant by virtue of being tungsten and having no other parts. This is why I spend the money for the better CFLs. I've been using CFLs for well over a decade now. Been using them since the 90s, so not an expert, but I've owned a lot of them.

Voltage drop. Get, make or borrow an IR scanner. (They are used to 'look through cloths', IIRC you can hack one out of a cheap camera.) The lose/dirty connection will show up as a warm-spot on a wall plate/fuse box. Make sure the light is on, install an incandescent for the troubleshoot. Do it when it's cool/cold and the heat is off.

You could get a CFL in 1985? Back then "Compact" florescent seemed to be those fixture with the 12" diameter circular tube and a conventional ballast. They certainly did not fit in a traditional socket. I started seeing what we consider CFLs around 2000 or so, and the first versions were pretty bad. There was some seriously defective Chinese garbage all over the market during the first few years. Once I found a bulb I liked (Commercial Electric from Home Depot--they don't appear to exist anymore sadly), I bought a bunch and swapped out most of the bulbs in my house.